Road fatalities in Chandigarh down by 19% in a year

The total of number of fatal road accidents in Chandigarh and the ensuing deaths witnessed a similar 19% decline in 2023 as compared to the year before, police data shows.

While 79 fatal road accidents killing 83 persons were recorded in 2022, their number in 2023 was 64 with 67 deaths.

In the non-fatal accidents’ category also, the number came down from 158 in 2022 to 118 in 2023 — a drop of 25%.

Moreover, road crashes involving vehicles ramming into fixed objects like trees or road berms also decreased from 21 in 2022 to 15 (28.5%) in the subsequent year.

Engineering solutions making roads safer

Deputy superintendent of police (Road Safety) Jaswinder Singh attributed the reduction in fatal road accidents to strict enforcement and engineering changes in city, among other factors. “Installation of table tops at black spots in city has been very instrumental in controlling speed of vehicles at critical junctions, thereby curtailing accidents. As against 15 a few years ago, there are only six black spots in city now, most of which are on the outskirts. Lane driving has been enforced near roundabouts. Mapping of all accidents and awareness drives also went a long way in controlling the number of deaths,” he said.

He added that the wide network of CCTV cameras, installed in the city under the Integrated Command Control Centre (ICCC), was also forcing people to comply with traffic rules even at night.

In terms of enforcement, in 2023, the Chandigarh Traffic Police issued a whopping 9.2 lakh challans and collected ₹10.6 crore as fine. The number of challans was 3.68 lakh more than the year before, thus recording a jump of 66.2%. In 2022, 5.5 lakh challans were issued for various offences.

The six black spots (accident-prone areas) in the city include the Railway light point, Kalagram light point, poultry farm chowk, Hallomajra roundabout, Shastri Nagar light point and Transport light point.

Punjab traffic adviser and member of the state-level Road Safety Council Navdeep Asija said considering that there was a nationwide growth in number of road accident deaths by as much as 11.9%, the figures in Chandigarh came as a relief. “The drop is due to strict enforcement and engineering improvements,” he said.